In the dropshipping business, merchants have products delivered to end customers by a third party, usually wholesalers. This means that the wholesalers who ship products, but any problems arising with the product delivery are the merchants’ responsibility. Given the truth that delivery contributes a lot to customer satisfaction, the merchants have to find all the ways they can to ensure that it runs well.

Today, we will mention some common issues with delivery in dropshipping product fulfillment and how to address them.

1. Problem 1: Order processing gets delayed

Sometimes merchants get caught in problems just because their wholesalers are not responsive. For example, a merchant gets an order and then forwards it to his wholesaler instantly, hoping that the order is processed quickly, and his customers get products fast. However, the wholesaler keeps silent.

If any merchants are caught in such a bad situation, they should immediately contact their wholesaler and see if any problems are happening.

If the situation happens frequently, it is time for merchants to change their wholesalers. This is because customers are not willing to wait for weeks to receive their packages at all. Especially, customers whose first order arrives late are more likely never to come back to the store again.

2. Problem 2: Orders get mis-delivered

Sometimes a package can’t make it to its right destination due to some typographical errors. As a result, its final receiver may get mad at the merchants because it takes him much longer than expected to get his order. In the worst scenario, the package gets lost, and no one knows where it is.

To avoid getting caught in such a situation, merchants should double-check order information (shipping detail included) with end customers by sending an order confirmation email. If they confirm all information is right, the merchants should forward the email directly to their wholesalers instead of re-typing it or sending it to an intermediary.

When the merchants get a tracking a number of the order from the wholesalers, they should self-check whether the shipping destination is right. If the wholesalers make it wrong, the merchants ask them to re-process the shipment immediately before it actually gets to others’ hands.

3. Problem 3: Tracking numbers get mis-sended

Sometimes you receive a tracking number that is either invalid or of a different package. Your supplier can issue hundreds or even thousands of tracking codes a day; therefore, they sometimes make mistakes.

Wholesalers have to process hundreds of orders each day, so, understandably, sometimes they mis-sended a tracking number to their merchants. So, merchants should test tracking numbers before passing it to their end customers. If any problems arise, contact wholesalers instantly.